The sky over the Han Clan Estate was a bruised purple, heavy with the scent of an impending storm. But for ten-year-old Han Yue, the real storm was already inside the Great Hall. He stood trembling, his small hands hidden in the oversized sleeves of a ceremonial robe that felt more like a shroud.
The Verdict of the Veins
In the center of the hall stood the Spirit-Testing Column, a towering monolith of white jade designed to react to the purity of a child's spiritual roots. One by one, the other children of the clan had touched it, eliciting glows of vibrant green, fiery red, or steady blue. Their parents beamed with pride.
Then, it was Yue's turn.
As his palm met the cold surface, the hall fell into a suffocating silence. There was no glow. No light. Instead, a thin, oily black vein began to crawl up the jade, like a crack in a mirror. The air grew cold, and the elders recoiled as if they had touched a corpse.
"Corruption," whispered the High Priest, his voice trembling with a mixture of fear and disgust. "He does not possess a Spiritual Root. He carries the Infortune of the Void. He is not a cultivator... he is a curse upon our lineage."
The Father's Coldness
Han Xiao, the Patriarch and Yue's father, watched from his high throne. His face, carved from the same cold stone as the mountains, didn't show a flicker of grief. He didn't see a son; he saw a stain on his reputation, a flaw in the perfect bloodline he had spent decades refining.
"A Patriarch cannot father a Calamity," Han Xiao spoke, his voice booming through the hall like a death knell. "The boy is a defect. A vessel of filth that will drain the luck of this clan until we are nothing but dust."
Yue looked up, his eyes wide and brimming with unshed tears. "Father... please. I can train harder. I can—"
"You are no son of mine," Han Xiao interrupted, his gaze shifting to the guards. "Take him away. The Clan Han has no room for the weak, and the heavens have no mercy for the cursed."
The Descent
The guards didn't hesitate. They seized Yue by the shoulders, their grip bruising his fragile skin. He was dragged out of the hall, past the mocking whispers of his cousins and the indifferent stares of his aunts.
They didn't take him to the servant quarters or the outskirts of the city. They headed for the rear of the estate, where the ground dropped away into a jagged, lightless chasm known as The Pit.
It was a place for the dead, the traitors, and the broken.
"Down you go, little curse," one guard grunted, giving him a final, brutal shove.
Yue fell. The wind whipped past his ears, a chaotic roar that drowned out his final cry for help. He hit the damp, bone-strewn earth with a sickening thud, the darkness of the pit swallowing him whole.
The First Seed of Hate
As he lay there in the mud, his ribs cracked and his spirit shattered, Yue stared up at the tiny, distant circle of the sky. He waited for a rescue that would never come. He waited for a father who had already forgotten his name.
In the silence of the abyss, something stirred deep within the earth beneath him. A dark, ancient consciousness, dormant for a thousand years, felt the arrival of a vessel perfectly hollowed out by despair.
[System Initialization: Resonance with 'Infinite Misfortune' detected]
[Host Identity: Han Yue]
[Status: Forsaken]
A tiny, thorn-like root sprouted from the shadows, pricking Yue's finger. He didn't pull away. The pain of the thorn was nothing compared to the hole in his chest.
"If the heavens won't have me," Yue whispered, his voice cracking as his eyes began to glow with a faint, unnatural violet light, "then I will make the earth tremble."